Rick Cotton on airport construction progress and a new Manhattan bus terminal

Rick Cotton, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, returned to City & State’s annual Transportation Summit on Oct. 28 for a fireside chat with Editor-in-Chief Ralph R. Ortega. During their conversation before an audience at 630Second in Manhattan, Cotton provided updates on airport construction projects, the rebuild of Manhattan’s bus terminal and how it fits into a reimagining of Eighth Avenue. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Port Authority has many ongoing capital projects around the region. Let’s check in on the progress of these projects, including the latest developments at the three airports: JFK, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty. Wasn’t LaGuardia again a Forbes Travel Guide winner?

Yes, I’m delighted you mentioned that. Last week, the Forbes Travel Guide, based on interviews, it wasn’t actually based just on their judgment, based on interviews with 9,000 travel writers, frequent travelers, rated LaGuardia Airport the best airport in the United States for the second year in a row. So that is our standard and I’m really delighted with that recognition. It’s interesting that both LaGuardia and Terminal A at Newark, which opened in doors almost two years ago, have both received from another rating service SkyTrax, which is international, their five star rating for both airports and there are only three airports in the United States that have five star-rated facilities. So we’re delighted to be in that company, to be seen as one of the premier airports in the country and from our point of view, that was our goal. People who came into the three Port Authority airports would constantly say, how can other countries have superb airports and the U.S., certainly the New York-New Jersey region, seems so far behind and our goal is to make the New York-New Jersey airports the best in the world, not the worst.

So what’s next for New York Liberty? Aren’t they replacing the AirTrain?

Well, we have big agendas at all three airports. At Newark, as I mentioned, a brand new Terminal A. The old Terminal A gave LaGuardia a run for its money in terms of which was worse. But now Terminal A (is) a premier terminal. Three weeks ago, we broke ground on a brand new AirTrain for Newark. It’s a $3.5 billion project (and) moving forward on the groundbreaking (was) really symbolic. From our point of view, what we’re trying to do, not only in terms of hitting world-class standards, but when we make a commitment, when we make a promise, actually deliver on it. And so we believe we’ve done that at LaGuardia. At Newark, we’ve got Terminal A. Contemporaneous to Terminal A is a brand new 1,000-car parking garage, plus a centralized rental car facility, and what we’re now focused on is delivering a brand new AirTrain and a brand new Terminal B. We published a vision plan for the entire airport and we want to get all three of the airports up to world-class standards.

And so moving on from Newark, if I can to JFK, from my point of view, big doings at JFK. For those of you who’ve been there, there is a lot of construction going on out there. For those of you who have been and may have gotten caught in some of the slower traffic, I wouldn’t try to apologize for the congestion. But if you take a big step back, we kept the airport running throughout the construction period. The construction period will keep on for another, ultimately a couple of years. But 2026 will be a big, big year for JFK, because the first phases of both of the two brand new, huge international terminals at JFK will open their doors. The roadway network will virtually be completed. 2026 is a real marker for JFK and we had ambitions beyond them.

The Port Authority Bus Terminal has been the subject of so much negativity for so many years and now we’re going to see a new bus terminal that I don’t think any of us would have ever imagined being built there.

I realized I should have said one other thing about Kennedy. While there’s been a major amount of construction going on out there, the volume of passengers has just continued to skyrocket. This August was the busiest August, if you look at all three airports, that the Port Authority airports have ever seen. This past Labor Day weekend (was the) busiest Labor Day weekend ever, and the only point about that is that the combination of the construction and the volume of passengers, I don’t think it’s unfair to say it’s a bit of a minor miracle that the traffic kept flowing. Yes, there was congestion, but the volumes in which the airport was operating, the amount of construction, the temporary roadways that were rebuilding the entire network was, from our point of being, quite an achievement.

Shifting to the bus terminal we have embarked in the last couple of months (on) an actual groundbreaking of the bus tunnel. So it is underway, and this is something that should have happened decades ago. For those of you who have encountered it, who have walked past it, who use it, it is just way past its design life. If you look at the outside of it, it looks much more like a fortress than it does a public building. It looks like it’s built to fence the community out as opposed to being a vibrant part of the community. And so our goal is to make this both a world-class transportation hub in terms of serving bus riders who are commuting in and out New Jersey, but also to make it a vibrant part of the neighborhood. We want to bring the same standards that we’ve embraced at the airports.

We will have a multistory atrium entrance. It will have modern technology. We are working very hard to make it a net-zero facility, primarily electric buses with sufficient charging support structure for that by, just again, looking at every aspect of the building to wind up with an environmentally responsible and leading example of the ability to build net-zero facilities in an urban environment. Transportation sites are a well-known heavy emitter of greenhouse gases. We want our facilities to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Can you elaborate a bit more on where the Port Authority fits into this whole transformation of Eighth Avenue? 

Yes, absolutely. Right now, the bus terminal, that structure, which as they say, should have been torn down years, probably decades ago. It’s a drag on the community, that Eighth Avenue corridor, which is anchored on its northern end by the bus terminal. That building is a problem. It is a building, particularly from the outside, that makes you not want to be in that neighborhood, and it can be exactly the reverse. So we think of it as a building block, not only as a modern transportation hub, but also as part of a contribution to the revitalization of that part of town.

The construction period is going to be a difficult period, but in order to get buses off the street, which was one of the primary priorities of the community, we’re building actually three structures: rebuilding the bus terminal itself, the gates where people get off and on buses. But in addition, building a new structure, which will specifically be to get buses off the street, staging and storage. The transportation facility has to cycle buses through gates, three, four, sometimes five times an hour in order for that to happen. The next bus has to be sitting waiting to come in to the gate as soon as the prior bus pulls out, and you have to have it sitting obviously close by. Right now, many of the buses idle on the streets. They cause traffic. They generate emissions.

And so we build this facility, which not only is going to be an appealing architectural structure, but it’s going to have amenities, concessions that will serve the community, as well as the riders. But it will also get the buses off the street, so the traffic flow in that neighborhood should be much, much freer. Obviously, it’s off Times Square. As I say, we want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. So big changes for that neighborhood. We were really committed to making the bus terminal, the new bus terminal structure, part of the revitalization – very hopeful. We talked to Andy Byford (at Amtrak). We’re committed to working together in terms of trying to view that as a corridor. (Penn Station is) at the southern end. We’re at the northern end, and it’s a very high priority.

Speaking of “Train Daddy,” do you often have conversations with Andy Byford? Have you been chatting about the Trump administration and the way it has been taking an interest in New York and its funding?

I’m not sure I should go there. Look, we’re at a strange period. From the Port Authority’s point of view, we want to work with all of the other transportation agencies around. There are huge challenges in terms of working with D.C. But the Port Authority has, what I used to think of as a disadvantage, which is (an) extremely modest funding from the federal government. The Port Authority was set up 100 years ago to be self-sustaining. So we get our revenues from our business partners operating the airports. We work generally with public-private partnerships. So private partners, when we’re building terminals, they provide private financing, literally every penny of construction dollars required to build the terminals. The Port Authority uses Port Authority capital to build the infrastructure, but none of that is federal money. So our projects are moving forward. We have important working relationships with our federal partners, but we are not dependent on the federal government for financing. And we’re trying to work the relationship out in a way that other agendas that are driving Washington don’t get in the way with forward progress.